Leaders often blame accountability problems when the real issue is unclear expectations. Without specific goals and metrics, employees can't succeed. Define what winning looks like before demanding accountability.
So everybody says that they want accountability, and I don't think most really do. I think most want compliance. I mean, think about this for a second. If people don't do what we expected, we call it an accountability problem first. But hold your horses for a second. Accountable to what? Are they accountable to a clear goal? Is it a specific number? Is it an expectation that was never clearly defined? Here's what I see over and over again. I've done this. A leadership team walks out of a meeting convinced everyone's aligned, and then 30 days later they're frustrated because their people weren't quote unquote accountable. That's not really how it works. People can't be accountable to something that wasn't ever clear. Read that again. Accountability without clarity isn't accountability. It's frustration. That's the mistake that we make as leaders. We keep trying to improve accountability, but I'd rather improve clarity because clarity changes behavior. Behavior changes performance and performance changes results. That's why I believe human performance is a completely different conversation. See, we're obsessed with holding people accountable, but we should be obsessed with making sure they know exactly what winning looks like. Because if your people can't define winning, we need to stop talking about accountability because we're really not even there yet.
